r.i.p. 40

“u.s. pow like a son to idaho town”
it took me three days to figure out what that meant.

“spaceboy, i missed you” 
waking up at 8 pm in a cold sweat in your mother’s bed on prom night.

his name was john kennedy, not john f. kennedy. he was a man i knew last year who didn’t own a tv, wore ties and loved gardening. this is not about him.

wanting to say something normal in response to the puffiness of humanity, i said “yeah.” i only ever say “yeah” or “okay.” i pretend to look for something in my fingernails.
“what are you doing here?”
i should’ve left two hours ago but i didn’t want to go home. i never want to go home these days. so i stayed and we walked down to the library together. we were walking behind a boy with a gap between his two front teeth and light blue athletic shorts, yelling about something.
he gestured at the boy in the light blue athletic shorts, trying to talking to me. he said “man, these lacrosse boys. you see them… they start so young. they have a certain look to them. i don’t know… something… it’s not good.”
i said “yeah.”
i can’t look at his face and we’re about the same height. an easy-going well-off go-getter in a button-up shirt. everything i’d like to be: smart without the burden of self-reflection. he speaks loudly. the president of the united states. he’s so perfect and normal and tall.
in the library, he was reading abraham lincoln, vampire hunter and i was reading susan minot.

i bought a magnet from a dollar store of one of those blue hindu goddess ladies with multiple arms. the man at the counter was indian,
he said “you know what is this?” in a thick accent.
“$1.29,” i said.
“no. you know what this is?”
“oh, no. it’s a gift.”
it wasn’t a gift, i just needed magnets for my magnet board and i think it offended him. i think he thought i was debasing his religion.

her body is open and it annoys me kind of. i hear a balding man’s falsetto voice from the record player in her parents’ bedroom. pretending to be sleeping with her head against the wall, she’s just under a round mirror with little tissue-paper flowers glued around it. there are stripes of sunlight from the cracks between the blinds, on her legs. i’ve seen these legs before. everyone’s seen these legs before. on days when her short-shorts are so short it looks like she’s naked under her black dog-hair-covered north face jacket. at 15, she’s shown her legs to a lot of people. there’s a hairbrush, a bulletin board with photographs of she and her friends at summer camp, a butterfly paperweight — all illuminated with stripes of sunlight. i pull gently on her leg.
disposable cups, open legs. her skin looks softer in the light. bubbles of alcohol now lay flat in her solo cup as she starts to blink out of a dream and into a hangover.
as a hangover of a childhood memory starts to foam in my eyelid, i regret only for a second spilling her virginity and then i pull gently on her leg again.

i am heart-broken and impressionable again and it’s late. but my new dream is so hot.

the cross i wore rusted. it left marks on my chest so i stopped wearing it.

chasing a new makeup-covered dream; i’m alive. if i stop sexing up illusions of happiness, i’ll die. so i’ve sexed up a new dream to try to distract myself. i’ll let her give me a lap dance and then i’ll let her leave.

it’s because i was walking and the sky seemed so low. a sheet of white cellophane just sort of resting on my head — not enwrapping my head — resting flat. i realized i wanted to balance the sky on my head forever. never letting it envelop me. because i never want a religion, i only want to want things.

just give me a hot dream to take to the prom, for me to fondle, with which i can toy for a while. 

it’s this illusion of normality that seems so perfect to me right now. i want a book and i want a tie and i want a short haircut and i want to button the buttons on my shirt and i want a picket fence and i want a baby in a highchair who will start playing soccer real soon. that’s my new dream and i want it so bad.

i opted to sit out of the game of basketball for religious reasons. i sat in the corner of the gymnasium and i listened to a pink ipod shuffle while i watched the boys in white t-shirts play basketball to the music. i felt bodiless and i felt at peace.